Dr. Mike Daley - Founder of OrthogenRX
Bilt215
Dr Mike Daley has a big personality to go along with his big company exit. But his seeming overnight success was years in the making. He spent decades assembling advanced degrees and making money for Big Pharma before deciding at the ripe age of 62 to become an entrepreneur and launch his company Orthogenrx. Dr Daley literally liquidated his retirement plans, raised a few million from investors and bet the farm on importing an injection for knee pain already used widely overseas. Seizing the opportunity to exploit a rarely used FDA process loophole he was able to fast track the approvals and...
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Dan Dimitri - Founder/CEO of PharmaForce
Bilt215
After spending 20+ years as a project manager for giants Kaiser Permanente and McKesson he paused to find a problem that he could solve with a new business. He took a deep dive into interviewing clients to find aches and pains that he could capitalize on. After much research and a chance encounter with an investor-backer he launched PharmaForce with the mission to deliver flexible technology solutions for pharmacies, providers and patients demanding greater transparency and lower costs. After a mere 7 years he recently had a very successful exit to a PE firm. Tune in to hear Dan’s story on...
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Sylvester Mobley — Founder and CEO of Coded by Kids
Bilt215
Sylvester Mobley is the Founder and CEO of the youth tech education non-profit, Coded by Kids. Through his organization he works to increase access to tech education opportunities for those who are underrepresented in tech, especially children of color. Under his leadership, Coded by Kids has grown from serving fewer than 15 children in a rec center to serving more than 500 students per week. Tech has a lot of great benefits but there are still groups of people being locked out of it.
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Felicite Moorman — CEO of STRATIS IoT
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Felicite Moorman is the CEO and co-Founder of STRATIS IoT, the only Sidewalk to Sofa® Intelligent Building Solution built for Multifamily and Student Housing. STRATIS helps create smart apartments and intelligent buildings built for the complexities of split multi-family and student housing. Serving over 325,000 apartments in the US, and over 18,000 internationally, STRATIS is poised for more growth in the future.
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Mahe Bayireddi — Co-Founder and CEO of Phenom People
Bilt215
Mahe Bayireddi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Phenom People, a global HR technology company with a mission to help 1 billion people find the right job. With over 200 million people using the product in 140 countries, including 50 of the Fortune 500 companies, Mahe is well on his way to achieving his goal of revolutionizing the talent life cycle through technologies, specifically AI.
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Nader Elm — Co-Founder and CEO of Exyn Technologies
Bilt215
Nader Elm is the Co-Founder and CEO of Exyn Technologies, a commercialization of the technology spun out of GRASP Labs (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania). Since its founding in 2014, Exyn has become the world leader in autonomous data acquisition using drone technology.
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Bill Yoh — Co-Owner of Day and Zimmermann, Author, Chairman of Yoh Group
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Bill Yoh is the youngest of five children born to Spike Yoh. Bill's grandfather, Harold, helped build the Philadelphia-based business that is now in its 5th generation, Day & Zimmermann. Founded in 1901 as a fledgling staffing company for engineers, it has grown into a massive organization of 45,000 employees globally and nearly $3 billion in revenue, making it one of the biggest privately held companies in the US and the world.
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Mike Hagan — Founder, Operator, Investor and CEO of Hawk Capital
Bilt215
Mike Hagan is a founder, operator and wildly successful investor in a variety of companies. He has repeatedly proven his ability to create or invest in a company, scale it and successfully exit. His venture was the B2B procurement WebHost VerticalNet, which hit a market capital peak of $11 billion. Unfortunately, Vertical Net ended in flames like many other dot.com companies at the turn of the millennium.
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Bob Moore — Serial Entrepreneur and CEO of Crossbeam
Bilt215
Bob Moore is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience, who started his first business venture when he was at Princeton. In the early 2000s, as online poker was becoming popular, Bob jumped on an observation he made to create the Mooraculator to computerize what his peers were calculating in their heads to level the playing field for others who wanted to make money playing poker.
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Dean Miller — President and CEO of PACT
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Dean Miller has been a venture capitalist for over 20 years, with particular interest in the healthcare technology and innovations space. Brought up in upstate New York, his early experiences shaped him for independence and entrepreneurship. Dean served as Managing Director at Novitas Capital, where he focused on venture capital investments across healthcare and technology.
info_outlineTony Nichols, is the Senior Chairman Emeritus of Brandywine Realty Trust, a firm that grew out of a company Tony founded in 1982. He is one of the founding members of Applebrook Golf Club, has served on the board of Fox Chase Bank, St. Joseph's University and currently serves on the West Catholic Board, his alma mater. On this episode, Tony shares more about his 50 year career, the challenges and obstacles he faced along the way and how he overcame them. From his first job to the Chesco-Nichols Group to Brandywine, Tony shares the lessons he’s learned and the insights he has gleaned over the years. Tune in to find out more.
Key Takeaways:
[1:31] Kevin introduces his guest for this episode — Tony Nichols.
[2:09] Kevin does a speed round with Tony.
[2:43] Tony shares a little bit more about his time at West Catholic.
[4:04] Tony discusses his experience with going to college as night school.
[5:45] Tony's first job was with Philadelphia Savings Fund Society (PSFS), and he also spent some time with the Marines.
[7:32] What prompted Tony's move from PSFS to Colonial Mortgage Company?
[9:32] What was the market like in the '70s?
[15:24] How important was Colonial to PNB?
[16:44] Tony explains how he and Bob Chesco got together to start their company.
[26:02] How closely did Tony follow his business plan?
[30:26] How did Chesco-Nichols evolve through the years, over time?
[35:00] What was Tony's interaction with Pete Musser from Safeguard Scientific?
[37:25] What brought about the next stage in Tony's business journey to go public?
[41:20] Tony talks about some of the other key players in his business journey.
[46:35] What was the scale of the projects Tony took on at that time?
[47:11] What was the state of the industry when Tony went public?
[51:34] What was the strategy at Brandywine?
[55:11] Tony and Kevin discuss some of the big projects from Brandywine right now.
[1:05:22] Did Tony have any regrets about going public?
[1:08:13] What kind of leader is Tony? He shares more about his leadership style and how it had changed over the years.
[1:13:33] Who were some major influences in Tony's life?
[1:20:39] What is Tony's opinion on whether entrepreneurs are born or made?
Links:
West Catholic Preparatory High School